Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Mosaic News

Today I had a chance to review Nick Floro's What does Web 2.0 Mean to Education? Lots of innovative technology covered in a mere 65 minutes. Of particular note was the Marmushi Newsmap site.



If you didn't get a chance to explore this site from Marumushi, check it out. News stories appear in a mosaic on the screen. The news feed is from Google news. The stories are color coded by topic; older stories appear in darker shades so you can easily determine the age of the story. Each tile in the mosaic is a hyper link to a story on a news site. It is really quite nifty.

Of similar note was the term "mash-up". For me, a "mash-up" represents the new term for music mixes. Djs are taking elements from 2 or more songs and melding them together to create some really awesome music. Floro describes a 'mash-up' as "bits of information from several sites to create a new application." Very cool!


4 comments:

Giovanna Ghio said...

LOL.. Yes, 'mash-up'...I'm right there with you (but I'm thinking bootie dj adrian and mysterious d). While I'm not a fan of the term, the concept of sharing data to create whole new applications is awesome. Often, I have wondered what is the value in all this information if it's not applicable to some relevant use. When I see tools like Marimushi, I realize the value of web2.0 beyond a buzz word.

Yu-Fen said...

Ha. When I watch the " macworld 2008 conference" and saw the slide of the marumushi, I kept thinking where i saw the interface before.....it is so eye-catching...now I know where I saw it.
I saw it last week in your blog.

The idea of the design is very friendly, functional and fashionable. It's convent for user to surf the news in the world.

Joshua said...

I was also impressed by Marumushi's website. That being said, just because it's impressive, doesn't mean it's useful. I don't see myself switching to that website to get my news, even if it has a new approach to filtering the news through to us. The traditional news delivery format is one thing I find solace in. It's simplicity beckons me when I'm tired of interacting with multimedia enhanced sites. It's actually the same reason while I still read from paper-bound books, I can only take so much flashing, sliding, and other effects.

Marcus P. said...

Since creating this post, I have discovered another news source in my home. Not the paper...And certainly not the web! The Wii has a news channel. So cool and so easy to use. It looks like the programmers took elements from web 2.0 tech to develop the interface- like the ability to surf the globe and find stories by country.

With that said, I don't really turn on the Wii at all. It's just a cool toy that requires a 10 year old to explain how to use it!